i  s' 


/ 


Published  by  the  Union  Republican  Sor^gressional  Committee,  Washington,  B.  C. 


ADDRESS 


OF  THE 


PRINTERS’  GRANT  AND  COLFAX  CLUB 


OF  THE 


DISTRICT  OF  COLUMBIA. 


TO  OUR  FELLOW-CRAFTSMEN  THROUGHOUT  THE  UNION: 

We  greet  you,  gentlemen,  and  congratulate  you  upon  the  auspicious  opening  of  the  Presidential 
campaign.  The  political  sky  is  bright,  and  Victory  smiles  upon  us  in  the  near  future.  Let  us 
unite,  organize,  and  labor  till  it  rests  on  our  standards  ! 

Animated  by  the  conviction  that  the  election  to  the  Presidency  and  Vice  Presidency  of 
Ulysses  S.  Grant  and  Schuyler  Colfax,  those  tried  patriots  to  whom  has  been  committed  by  the 
people  the  standard  of  popular  liberty  and  equal  rights,  will  bring  to  the  country  honor,  peace, 
and  prosperity,  we  have  united  ourselves  into  a  Printers’  Club,  the  better  to  aid  in  the  accom¬ 
plishment  of  this  so  desirable  result.  In  this  work  we  invite  your  sympathy  and  co-operation. 
We  believe  no  more  patriotic  cause  could  enlist  the  services  of  good  citizens. 

We  consider  it  eminently  appropriate  that  Printers,  who  proudly  count  of  their  number  that, 
singularly  pure  and  upright  statesman  who  occupies  the  second  place  upon  our  ticket,  should  uni;.-, 
together,  through  love  of  country  and  pride  of  craft,  in  support  of  this  ticket. 

It  is  altogether  fitting  that  they  who  have  been  laboring  for  the  enlightenment  of  mankind 
since  far  back  in  the  dim  past,  when  the  glorious  genius  of  Faust  flashed  in  splendor  on  .1 
benighted  world,  should  still  be  found  on  the  side  of  universal  intelligence,  without  which  libe:  :v 
cannot  be  perpetuated  nor  made  to  yield  the  full  measure  of  its  rich  blessings. 

We  boldly  assert  that  the  candidates  of  our  choice  are  the  only  true  representatives 
impartial  liberty  and  universal  intelligence  to-day  before  the  American  people  for  their  suffrages 
for  the  first  offices  in  the  public  gift.  v 

The  party  which  is  marshaled  by  these  great  leaders  is  the  party  of  progressive  freedom  and 
perpetual  Union,  of  free  schools  and  universal  education,  of  national  advancement  and  goven  - 
mental  reform. 

When  we  array  ourselves  under  its  banner,  borne  by  these  noble  chieftains,  we  enlisr  to 
fight  the  battles  of  an  aggressive  civilization,  and  cast  behind  us  the  stagnant  conservatism  or  a 
dead  past,  leaving  to  the  Bourbons  in  American  politics  who  “  forget  nothing  and  learn  noth!.  ” 
the  fool’s  work  of  digging  among  its  ashes  in  the  vain  hope  of  finding  precepts  of  government 
for  a  new  age. 

The  party  which  has  chosen  these  leaders  to  guide  it  to  victory  is  the  parent  of  those  wise 
and  beneficent  measures  of  legislation  which  have  within  the  last  decade  carried  our  country 
forwarded  with  such  mighty  strides  in  the  race  of  the  nations. 

It  swept  away  slavery,  striking  the  chains  from  the  shackled  limbs  of  three  millions  of  work¬ 
ing  men  and  women.  By  that  supreme  act  it  ennobled  humanity,  elevated  labor,  and  dealt  a 
p«werful  blow  in  favor  of  us  as  workingmen  5  for  these  emancipated  slaves,  degraded  though  they 
be,  were  and  are  still  members  of  the  great  family  of  working  people.  We  are  members  of  that 
universal  brotherhood,  and  their  interest  and  ours  are  inseparable ;  the  oppression  and  degradation 
of  them  was  indirectly  the  attempted  enslavement  and  degradation  of  us ;  it  was  a  blow  at  the 
system  of  labor,  and  therefore  an  insult  to  all  laborers.  Ignorance  and  slavery  go  hand  in  hand  ; 
let  the  first  perish  as  did  the  last,  an  enemy  to  civilization,  and  let  both  become  relics  of  barbar¬ 
ism.  The  Republican  party,  under  Grant  and  Colfax,  with  the  blessing  of  God,  is  marching 
on  to  the  complete  accomplishment  of  this  humane  work.  Slavery  has  already  gone  down  before 
its  omnipotent  tread ;  let  us  uphold  its  hands  and  swell  its  liberating  columns,  and  ignorance  and 
its  attendant  evils  will  go  the  way  of  the  twin  relic. 

As  Workingmen,  all  our  interests  are  on  the  side  of  the  elevation  of  the  dignity  of  labor  5  as 
Printers,  we  are  for  the  largest  measure  of  popular  intelligence,  for  without  that  our  “  occupation’s 
gone;”  as  Patriots,  we  must  be  for  liberty,  now  and  henceforth.  Then  let  us  support  the  can¬ 
didates  and  the  party  upon  whose  banners  are  inscribed  Liberty  and  Union,  Equality  and 
Enlightenment  ! 

The  Republican  party,  following  up  its  just  measure  of  emancipation,  has  given  the  ballot 
to  the  liberated  slaves,  thus  increasing  the  political  strength  of  the  working  classes  greatly.  We 


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) 


support  the  party  which  )6  just  and  generous  enough  to  increase  our  political  power  in  the  land, 
end  oppose  the  party  which  seeks  to  restrict  suffrage,  oppress  labor,  and  perpetuate  the  rule 
of  caste. 

The  Republican  party,  as  we  have  declared,  is  the  recorded  friend  of  education.  It  has 
taken  the  first  steps  towards  establishing  a  national  system  of  education,  which  is  a  national 
blessing.  Education  is  the  great  need  of  working  men  and  women.  It  will  elevate  and  redeem 
them  from  the  thraldom  of  capital.  Let  us  support  that  party  which  will  aid  us  to  educate 
aur  children. 

This  party  is  also  the  parent  of  the  Homestead  Law,  that  beneficent  measure  which  secures 
lands  to  the  landless  and  homes  to  the  homeless — a  measure  enacted  exclusively  for  the  benefit 
of  the  working  classes  by  a  Republican  Congress.  Let  us  show  our  gratitude  and  good  sense  by 
supporting  the  party  which  gives  us  lands  and  homes. 

Thi3  bold  young  party  is  the  pronounced  champion  of  national  honest}',  and  opposes  every 
scheme  of  repudiation  as  a  national  crime.  Shall  we  as  workingmen  encourage  repudiation  in 
any  form  ?  Repudiation  would  unsettle  all  business,  and  cause  universal  distress,  commercial 
anarchy,  “  hard  times,”  that  remorseless  enemy  of  the  working  classes.  Who  that  labors  for 
his  bread  does  not  know  from  sad  experience  that  during  “hard  times”  it  is  the  toiling  millions 
who  always  suffer  most?  Let  us  as  workingmen,  with  a  wise  regard  for  our  own  interests, 
support  the  party  which  is  for  national  honesty,  the  true  basis  of  national  prosperity,  and  oppose 
the  party  that  shamefully  proclaims  itself  for  repudiation,  the  equivalent  of  national  dishonesty, 
the  syno/iym  fer  national  disgrace  and>  shame ;  that  would  inaugurate  universal  distress  by 
undermining  the  credit  of  the  government,  flooding  the  country  with  a  depreciated  and  fluctuat¬ 
ing  currency — with  lying  promises  to  pay,  attractive  to  the  ear  and  eye,  but  which  turn  to  ashes 
like  the  apples  of  the  desert. 

A  Republican  Congress  has  given  to  the  workshops  of  the  country  the  blessings  of  an 
Eight-1"  our  Law,  thus  setting  a  wise  example  for  private  employers  to  follov/,  and  inaugurating 
a  revolution  in  the  system  of  labor  which  is  already  spreading — a  new  revolution  that  shall  not 
stop  in  its  benign  progress  until  it  reaches  all  the  great  labor-marts  of  the  nation  and  ameliorates 
Lie  condition  cf  millions.  By  this  just  and  liberal  measure  Congress  gives  proof  once  again  that 
it  honestly  desires  the  elevation  of  the  working  classes ;  that  it  is  no  champion  of  capital  as 
against  labor.  Let  us  as  workingmen  support  the  men  and  measures  of  that  party  which  has 
piven  us  eight  hours  as  a  day’s  work  ! 

\  The  rolls  cf  the  Union  army  and  navy,  as  well  as  the  records  left  by  the  supporters  of  the 
\va?  for  the  Union  in  all  the  loyal  States,  show  that  Printers  as  a  class  were  patriots.  While 
some  §f  our  number  were  false,  the  mass  wrere  true.  The  craft  was  largely  represented,  both 
on  Lind  and  sea,  in  that  heroic  struggle  for  national  existence,  and  many  of  its  members  earned 
honorable  distinction  and  w'orthy  scars.  Scores  of  them  performed  the  highest  duty  of  men 
ana  citizens  by  giving  their  lives  that  the  nation  might  not  perish.  They  died  on  the  rough 
edge  of  battle,  and  sleep  in  honored  graves  on  fields  made  famous  by  their  valor  and  endurance. 
By  their  sacrifice^  they  made  life  glorious  and  death  sublime.  Shall  not  their  memories  therefore 
be  imperishable  in  our  hearts  ?  Shall  we,  the  living,  now  dishonor  the  dead  by  dishonoring  the 
cause  for  which  they  fought  and  died?  What  else  but  dishonor  to  heir  memories  would  it  be 
for  us  now  to  fellowship  with  the  enemies  by  whose  murderous  hands  they  died  ?  As  we  love 
their  memories,  let  us  highly  resolve  that  this  shall  never  be  ? 

We  in  common  with  all  good  citizens  want  peace  and  good  government,  for  without  these 
there  can  be  no  prosperity7.  In  prosperous  times  only  can  we  have  our  necessary  wants  supplied. 
And  prosperous  times  exist  only  in  times  of  peace.  Grant  says,  “ Let  us  have  peace  /”  The 
Democratic  candidates  and  their  supporters  respond  with  the  revolutionary  and  treasonable  cry 
“ Let  us  overturn  the  existing  order  cf  things  in  the  South  ;  let  us  upset  the  ‘  carpet-bag  ’  governments 
and  drive  out  the  ‘ carpet-baggers' /”  as  they  madly  characterized  the  loyal  men  who,  under  the 
sacred  guarantees  of  the  national  Constitution,  have  sought  homes  in  the  South.  These  threats 
either  mean  war,  or  they  are  the  mere  reckless  outbursts  of  impotent  rage.  Their  authors 
must  either  be  responsible  for  the  full  meaning  of  their  revolutionary  language,  or  rest  under  the 
stigma  of  being  pronounced  wind-baggers — a  title  which  many  of  them  have  long  since  richly 
earned.  We  want  none  of  this  feast  of  revolution  and  anarchy  which  the  Democratic  leaders 
invite  us  to.  We  want  prosperous  times,  that  there  may  be  plenty  in  the  land.  In  order  to 
have  these  things  we  should  first  have  peace.  We  must  and  will  have  peace ;  and  woe,  woe  to 
the  men,  whoever  they  be,  who  shall  dare  to  stand  in  the  pathway  of  that  mighty  host  which 
lias  already  conquered  peace  from  the  internal  enemies  of  the  Republic ! 

Turning  from  these  noble  candidates  and  the  generous  principles  which  they  represent,  let 
us  examine  the  measures  and  men  which  the  opposite  party  offers  for  our  support,  and  the  record 
of  that  party. 

First  of  all,  the  Democratic  party  is  responsible  for  the  war  upon  the  nation  Its  southern, 
wing  conquered  in  battle,  and  its  northern  wing  defeated  at  the  polls,  the  two  again  unite  to 
renew  the  struggle  for  the  control  of  the  Government,  still  refusing  to  accept  the  results  of  the 


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arbitrament  which  their  leaders  invoked  ;  and  to-day  the  party  stands  in  the  ignoble  attitude  of 
resisting  the  return  of  peace,  order,  and  national  restoration. 

It  is  the  party  of  national  dishonor,  repudiation,  and  anarchy.  It  would  disgrace  the  nation 
by  fostering  its  sworn  enemies  and  proscribing  its  truest  friends  $  dishonor  it  by  repudiating  the 
solemn  promises  made  to  its  creditors  in  the  hour  of  sorest  need  $  and  plunge  it  again  in  to 
anarchy  by  attempting  the  overthrow  of  the  loyal  governments  erected  by  Congress  in  the 
insurgent  States. 

Its  composition  includes  the  organized  ignorance,  prejudice,  bigotry,  and  barbarism  of  the 
country,  and  it  feeds  on  the  worst  passions  of  bad  men  as  its  choicest  food.  In  the  South  it  is 
the  incarnation  of  rampant  treason,  assassinations  and  violence  j  in  the  North,  the  embodiment 
of  all  the  seditious  plottings,  midnight  conspiracies,  sneaking  cowardice  and  cringing  subserviency 
which  have  stamped  the  name  of  Copperhead  with  eternal  infamy. 

It  offers  candidates  for  your  suffrages,  one  of  whom  was  the  open,  pronounced  friend  of  the 
maddened  mob  which  ran  riot  in  the  streets  of  New  York  at  the  very  hour  when  many  of  you,  and 
many  more  of  your  brothers  and  friends,  were  struggling  in  a  life-and-death  struggle  with  the 
desperate  cohorts  of  rebellion  on  the  bloody  hills  of  Gettysburg  j  while  the  other,  though  he  once 
fought  in  the  Union  army,  now  blares  for  blood,  and  proclaims  for  raising  the  standard  of  revolt 
against  the  solemnly-enacted  laws  of  his  country.  The  first  encouraged  that  infuriated  and 
powerful  mob — a  mob  which  constituted  nothing  less  than  the  Northern  wing  of  the  Southern 
army — to  resist  the  draft  and  defy  the  national  authority,  thereby  making  an  important  diversion 
in  favor  of  the  rebel  commander  by  causing  the  withdrawal  of  more  than  twenty  thousand 
veteran  troops  from  the  enemy’s  front  to  protect  the  peace  in  .  New  York  against  Horatio 
Seymour’s  “  friends.”  Stimulated  by  his  incendiary  words,  this  maddened  mob  attacked  and 
burned  orphan  asylums,  pursued  and  murdered  citizens,  destroyed  private  property,  assaulted  a 
great  printing-office  in  which  scores  of  your  craft  were  employed,  blocked  the  wheels  of  trade  in 
a  great  metropolis,  to  the  loss  of  millions  to  its  inhabitants,  and  laid  the  first  city  of  the  continent 
defenseless  at  its  feet.  The  second,  though  he  was  then  fighting  in  the  field  against  the  friends 
of  Horatio  Seymour,  now  enters  the  unholy  alliance,  and  insults  his  late  comrades  by  asking 
them  to  imitate  his  perfidy,  let  perish  the  glorious  recollections  of  that  terrible  struggle,  and 
exalt  those  malignant  enemies  of  the  Republic  who  still  rejoice  in  their  treason. 

Its  candidates  were  nominated  by  a  convention  filled  with  the  most  conspicuous  and  vindictive 
adherents  of  the  “  lost  cause,”  while  the  fierce  battle-yell  of  the  rebel  army  rung  out  in  defiance 
at  the  mention  of  Seymour,  Blair,  and  Repudiation. 

Its  platform  was  shaped  by  men,  some  of  whom  have  declared,  even  since  the  convention, 
that  they  stand  ready  once  more  to  draw  their  swords  against  the  country 5  while  its  presses  in 
the  South  cry,  “  Let  us  go  into  the  campaign  for  Seymour  and  Blair  with  the  old  rebel  yell  !” 

Its  candidate  for  the  Presidency  is  proved,  by  documentary  evidence  to-day  on  file  in  the 
State  Department,  to  have  been  in  secret*conspiracy  with  the  rebel  emissaries  to  Canada  in  1864, 
with  the  undoubted  object  of  carrying  the  State  of  New  York  out  of  the  Union,  at  a  time  when 
our  struggle  for  national  existence  was  at  its  height,  and  while  the  country  was  yet  in  the  dark 
night  of  its  deep  distress.. 

But  why  continue  the  •  comparison  ?  The  contrast  is  endless.  Seymour  is  the  chosen 
representative  of  all  that  is  perfidious,  base  and  malign  in  American  politics.  Grant  is  the 
conceded  personification  of  republican  glory  and  national  honor.  Day  is  not  more  bright  than 
his  glorious  record.  His  name  and  fame  are  a  part  of  the  nation’s  best  history.  At  their 
mention  the  patriot  heart  of  the  nation  leaps  high  with  generous  inspiration.  His  election  will 
be  an  irreversible  guarantee  of  that  peace  which  the  country  needs.  Seymour’s  election  would 
be  the  resurrection  of  the  dead  Confederacy — a  triumph  of  the  “  lost  cause.”  Our  choice  is 
made.  Adopting  the  noble  utterance  of  our  beloved  leader,  we  pronounce  for  Grant  and 
Union,  Liberty  and  Law — and  God  defend  the  right ! 

HARRISON  G.  OTIS, 
WILLIAM  YOUNG, 

L.  H.  PATTERSON, 

A.  J.  PREALL, 

Washington,  D.  C.,  1st  August,  1868.  J.  S.  GOURLAY, 

Committee. 


The  foregoing  address  was  adopted  unanimously  at  a  regular  meeting  of  the  Printers’  Grant 
and  Colfax  Club  of  the  District  of  Columbia,  August  1,  1868,  and  by  a  resolution  of  the  Club, 
the  Corresponding  Secretary  was  instructed  to  circulate  the  same  among  the  printers  of  the 
country. 

Attest:  CHARLES  E.  LATHROP, 

President  Grant  and  Colfax  Printers'  Club. 


THOMAS  M.  MOORE, 

Recording  Secretary. 


REPUBLICAN  NATIONAL  PLATFORM 

ADOPTED  AT  CHICAGO,  MAY  21,  1868. 

The  National  Union  Republican  party  of  the  United  States,  assembled  in  National  Conven¬ 
tion,  in  the  city  of  Chicago,  May  20,  1868,  make  the  following  declaration  of  principles: 

First. —  We  congratulate  the  country  on  the  assured  success  of  the  reconstruction  policy  of 
Congress,  as  evinced  by  the  adoption,  in  a  majority  of  the  States  lately  in  rebellion,  of  constitu¬ 
tions  securing  equal  civil  and  political  rights  to  all,  and  regard  it  as  the  duty  of  the  Government 
to  sustain  these  constitutions,  and  to  prevent  the  people  of  such  States  from  being  remitted  to  a 
state  of  anarchy  or  military  rule. 

Second. — The  guarantee  by  Congress  of  equal  suffrage  to  all  loyal  men  at  the  South  was 
demanded  by  every  consideration  of  public  safety,  of  gratitude,  and  of  justice,  and  must  be 
maintained ;  while  the  question  of  suffrage  in  all  the  loyal  States  properly  belongs  to  the  people 
•f  those  States. 

Third. — We  denounce  all  forms  of  repudiation  as  a  national  crime;  and  national  honor  re¬ 
quires  the  payment  of  the  public  indebtedness  in  the  utmost  good  faith  to  all  creditors  at  home  and 
abroad,  not  only  according  to  the  letter,  but  the  spirit  of  the  laws  under  which  it  was  contracted. 

Fourth. — It  is  due  to  the  labor  of  the  nation  that  taxation  should  be  equalized  and  reduced 
as  rapidly  as  the  national  faith  will  permit. 

Fifth. — The  National  debt,  contracted  as  it  has  been  for  the  preservation  of  the  Union  for 
all  time  to  come,  should  be  extended  over  a  fair  period  for  redemption,  and  it  is  the  dutv  of 
Congress  to  reduce  the  rate  of  interest  thereon  whenever  it  can  honestly  be  done. 

Sixth. — That  the  best  policy  to  diminish  our  burden  of  debt  is  to  so  improve  our  credit  that 
capitalists  will  seek  to  loan  us  money  at  lower  rates  of  interest  than  we  now  pay,  and  must 
continue  to  pay  so  long  as  repudiation,  partial  or  total,  open  or  covert,  is  threatened  or  suspected. 

Seventh. — The  Government  of  the  United  States  should  be  administered  with  the  strictest 
economy;  and  the  corruptions  which  have  been  so  shamefully  nursed  and  fostered  by  Andrew 
Johnson  call  loudly  for  radical  reform. 

Eighth. — We  profoundly  deplore  the  untimely  and  tragic  death  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  and 
regret  the  accession  of  Andrew  Johnson  to  the  Presidency,  who  has  acted  treacherously  to  the 
people  who  elected  him  and  the  cause  he  was  pledged  to  support;  he  has  usurped  high  legislative  and 
judicial  functions  ;  has  refused  to  execute  the  laws  ;  has  used  his  high  office  to  induce  other  officers 
to  ignore  and  violate  the  laws  ;  has  employed  his  executive  powers  to  render  insecure  the  property, 
peace,  liberty,  and  life  of  the  citizens;  has  abused  the  pardoning  power;  has  denounced  the  National 
Legislature  as  unconstitutional;  has  persistently  and  corruptly  resisted,  by  every  means  in  his  power, 
every  proper  attempt  at  the  reconstruction  of  the  States  lately  in  rebellion;  has  perverted  the  public 
patronage  into  an  engine  of  wholesale  corruption  ;  and  has  been  justly  impeached  for  high  crimes 
and  misdemeanors,  and  properly  pronounced  guilty  thereof  by  the  votes  of  thirty-live  Senators. 

Ninth. — The  doctrine  of  Great  Britain  and  other  European  powers — that,  because  a  man  is 
once  a  subject,  he  is  always  so — must  be  resisted  at  every  hazard  by  the  United  States,  as  a  relic 
of  the  feudal  times,  not  authorized  by  the  law  of  nations,  and  at  war  with  our  national  honor 
and  independence.  Naturalized  citizens  are  entitled  to  be  protected  in  all  their  rights  of  citizen¬ 
ship,  as  though  they  were  native-born;  and  no  citizen  of  the  United  States,  native  or  natu¬ 
ralized,  must  be  liable  to  arrest  and  imprisonment  by  any  foreign  power  for  acts  done  or  words 
spoken  in  this  country;  and,  if  so  arrested  and  imprisoned,  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Government  to 
interfere  in  his  behalf. 

Tenth. — Of  all  who  were  faithful  in  the  trials  of  the  late  war,  there  were  none  entitled  to 
more  especial  honor  than  the  brave  soldiers  and  seamen  who  endured  the  hardships  of  campaign 
and  cruise,  and  imperilled  their  lives  in  the  service  of  the  country.  The  bounties  and  pensions 
provided  by  law  for  these  brave  defenders  of  the  nation  are  obligations  never  to  be  forgotten. 
The  widows  and  orphans  of  the  gallant  dead  are  the  wards  of  the  people — a  sacred  legacy 
bequeathed  to  the  nation’s  protecting  care. 

Eleventh. — Foreign  emigration,  which  in  the  past  has  added  so  much  to  the  wealth, 
development  of  resources,  and  increase  of  power  to  this  nation — the  asylum  of  the  oppressed  of 
all  nations — should  be  fostered  and  encouraged  by  a  liberal  and  just  policy. 

Twelfth. — This  Convention  declares  its  sympathy  with  all  the  oppressed  people  which  are 
struggling  for  their  rights. 

ADDITIONAL  RESOLUTIONS  ADOPTED. 

We  highly  commend  the  spirit  of  magnanimity  and  forgiveness  with  which  the  men  who 
have  served  the  rebellion,  but  now  frankly  and  honestly  co-operate  with  us  in  restoring  the  peace  of 
the  country,  and  reconstructing  the  Southern  State  governments  upon  the  basis  of  impartial  justice 
and  equal  rights,  are  received  back  into  the  communion  of  the  loyal  people ;  and  we  favor  the 
removal  of  the  disqualifications  and  restrictions  imposed  upon  the  late  rebels,  in  the  same  measure 
as  the  spirit  of  disloyalty  will  die  out,  and  as  may  be  consistent  with  the  safety  of  the  loyal  people. 

We  recognize  the  great  principles  laid  down  in  the  immortal  Declaration  of  Independence  as 
the  true  foundation  of  Democratic  Government ;  and  we  hail  with  gladness  every  effort  toward 
making  these  principles  a  living  reality  on  every  inch  of  American  soil.  • 


Gibson  Brothbrs,  Printkrs,  Washington,  D.  C. 


